Page 7 of Forgotten Path
“That’s it? No other communications?” she pressed.
“Sure, we text now and then. I was down in Alabama several years back, and I thought I might swing down to Florida afterward, but our schedules didn’t sync up.” He frowned. “Is something wrong?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. Joel’s … well, I guess he’s missing.”
“Missing?”
“We’re on a trivia team together, and he didn’t show up last night. I know that sounds silly, but he never blows it off. So I stopped by his place on my way to work today. His Jeep is parked in front of the camper, but he’s not here.”
“Maybe he went into the office early.”
“On foot? Anyway, he didn’t because I called his office. He’s not there, and he hasn’t called in to explain his absence.”
It seemed to Bodhi that the level of anxiety radiating off the detective—detectable even through the phone—might be excessive in response to an adult male skipping a day of work—especially an adult male who had a fun-loving, easy-going personality like Joel’s and especially the first day back after a long holiday weekend.
He probed her gently. “You don’t think he might have taken a spur-of-the-moment vacation?”
“I don’t know. Sure, maybe.” She lowered her voice to just above a whisper. “But I have a bad feeling about this. That’s why I came over to his camper to check on him.”
“Okay.” He accepted her gut reaction.
In his experience, intuition was often correct, and he figured that was doubly true for someone like Felicia, who followed up on hunches for a living.
“Even though Joel can be loosey-goosey about things, he doesn’t just blow off work—or his friends.”
“I see. Are you calling all his contacts, or is there a specific reason you thought he might be here?”
“I found your name and number scribbled on a note on his workstation in the camper. His laptop is missing, too. So I thought maybe he came to see you about a case.”
“A case?”
“Yeah. Hang on, let me grab the note.” Rustling sounded over the line, then she read, “Forensic black swan? Effects of subtox combo multiple toxins, e.g., STX, TTX, CDX. What about other HABs? Possible cluster. Talk to Bodhi.” She paused. “Does that mean anything to you?”
He answered slowly. “Well, a cluster could refer to a SUD cluster—a group of sudden, unexplained deaths concentrated in a single geographic location.”
“Like the folks at the retirement community on Golden Island, right?”
He nodded at the reference to the case that had brought him into Felicia and Joel’s orbit. “Right, that was a SUD cluster. Do you know if Joel has handled any particularly puzzling deaths lately?”
“No. I mean, I can’t be sure. And it’s possible another medical examiner reached out to him for a consult, but the recent deaths here have been pretty run-of-the-mill. At least the ones that have involved law enforcement. You know the drill—suicides, car crashes, shootings, more than our fair share of boating accidents. Oh, a telecommunications guy fell off a pole and broke his neck. But no clusters.”
“Hmm.”
“What do all those abbreviations mean?”
“STX, TTX, and CDX are naturally occurring neurotoxins. They were all present in a designer street drug that was briefly the rage in Canada.”
“A street drug? Could it kill someone?”
“Yes. Have you seen a lot of overdoses down there lately?”
She let out a defeated sigh. “Aren’t there always a lot of overdoses?”
“Sadly, you have a point. But these would be something unusual. The victims might be atypical, or the symptoms they present with could be out of the ordinary for a drug overdose.”
“I haven’t heard anything like that. But I’ll reach out to the narcotics task force and see if they know about a new drug. What’s it called?”
“It was known as Solo in Canada, but distribution was shut down, and the manufacturer entered into a deal with the authorities. I’d be surprised if someone resurrected that exact concoction.”
